The ranting of an IT Professional

For my last blog post of the decade I wanted to take a step back and look at how technology has changed in the last ten years. It’s pretty stunning when you think about it. Being a consultant and thus always being the vanguard for new technology it sometimes shocks me when I wax nostalgic and think back to where we were.

So ten years ago this day where were we with technology? Well Cobol programmers were getting rich and doomsday prophets were proclaiming the apocalypse was nigh or don’t you remember the Y2K scare?

Here is my top five list of technology which has really come into it’s own in the last decade. Some of these technologies existed in some form before but I think it’s really in the last ten years that they have come into their own

5. Google

Do you remember when geeks would argue about which search engine is the best? Well that pretty much came to a halt with the advent of Google. You only have to walk by a bunch of ditzy blonde airheads using Google as a verb to realize how big this has become. Google made the web far easier and far friendlier place which in turn spurred a lot of the other advancements in the web.

4. Cellular phones/Palm computing

Ten years ago these were separate concepts. Cell phones were big and bulky, palm computers were slow and crappy. Now you have Blackberries and iPhones, great technologies which ensure that I can be harrassed by work and drunken friends at all times of day and night in so many different ways.

3. High Speed Internet

Do you remember modem’s? Do you recall how much they sucked? This one should really be rated higher because so much of our technological advancements would never have happend without high speed internet.

2 Linux/Open Source

Sure Linux has been around since 1991, but the last ten years has seen it surge in popularity. So many systems and technologies out there are now being developed and running on a linux kernel. It’s everywhere and you probably don’t even know it.

1 Virtualization

The old paradigm is broken. Server virtualization has changed everything about being a sysadmin. The idea of installing a server OS directly onto a box without a hypervisor is mostly ludicrous. There are some exceptions where this is still necessary but look for even these to go away in the future.

So what is my prediction for the next decade.

IP v6 – This will change everything all over again.

VOIP – I was originally going to include this above and then I realized that as far as VOIP has come this market is so hugely still untapped. It will be this coming decade and not this past one where VOIP makes its mark.

Desktop Virtualization – Thirty years later and we are now going back to thin terminals!

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About This Blog

An IT consultant’s critical (and often caustic) look into the problem’s he faces on a daily basis. This will cover not only hardware and software related issues, but issues involving the vendors and clients he deals with.